"Our friend Sean Sasser has died. Our love goes out to his family & husband Michael. We will miss u so much," Winick tweeted.

Sasser - who was HIV positive - died of mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the lungs, according to husband Michael Kaplan.

He found fame in the 1990s for his relationship with Pedro Zamora, a star on The Real World: San Francisco. Their commitment ceremony was one of the first to be televised, before Zamora's death in 1994.

Sasser had been working as a pastry chef at the RIS restaurant in Washington DC this year.